Let's quest for Sword of Moonlight graphics...

[Holy_Diver]

I think it would be swell to put together a collection of all the graphics which accompanied the release of SoM. Starting with this one (https://www.fromsoftware.jp/main/soft/im...som_p1.gif) which I'd like to try to try to work into a new banner for the front page so we can get started converting the main site over to WordPress (we gotta have something, and WP is what I know/have)

There might be a better graphic for all I know, and just out of curiosity, I think it would be again very worthwhile to track down all the graphics we can, and lean on those of us with copies of the original product to scan/share what they can of their boxart/inserts/manuals etc.

[dmpdesign]

This would be a good project...if i ever get my hands on a real copy of SOM I would love to scan high res shots of all the artwork and get it on here.

[HwitVlf]

There's not much in the way of art on SoM's packaging- a decent picture on the front box, a couple on the jewel case manual and a nice embossed picture on the main manual. I was trying to scan them for you but my scanner decided to go belly up on the first scan (curse that Murphy and his laws!!!). Here are the best pictures I have (from the web).

[Holy_Diver]

I've really been wanting a good scan of that first one. Thanks!

The last one is hilarious. Someone should slap that on a book object


PS: All things considered this makes me wonder why all the skies packed with SOM are such useless crap??

Edited: Oh yeah, were you able to make the horizon go away? To me the sky system seems unusable because of that horizon always moving with the player (and nothing being beyond it) looking so unnatural (epileptic barf clouds aside)

[HwitVlf]

PS: All things considered this makes me wonder why all the skies packed with SOM are such useless crap??
Edited: Oh yeah, were you able to make the horizon go away? To me the sky system seems unusable because of that horizon always moving with the player (and nothing being beyond it) looking so unnatural (epileptic barf clouds aside)

I didn't think the skies that came with SoM were so bad.
As you probably know, PC game quality largely follows console limitations because of the whole cross-platform/developer motivation conspiracy. SoM was developed during the PS1 era and it was quite advanced for the 233MHz CPU, 1MB VRAM PCs that most people had at the time. I'd say they chose low polygon skies (which would seldom be seen in a KF dungeon-crawling setting) to free up resources for more important things like enemy swarms.

If by 'horizon go away' you're talking about the black that was beneath the horizon's line- then yes via an optional ground layer. But SoM could do that anyways with the old sky via fog settings.

[Holy_Diver]

I know games from back then, and the pack in skies still look bad bad bad by any standards. How clear was it made how to make new skies?

KFII (KF1 US) looked much better. Even if the clouds weren't always spazzing out (maybe they move faster than intended on modern hardware) they still look bad. Anyway, good news is you cracked this nut. I hope the horizon doesn't hold us back.

More good news is once I work out where SOM stops drawing 3D and starts drawing overlay stuff, it shouldn't be hard to sandwich any kind of graphics you want in between.

[dmpdesign]

I removed the animated part of the sky from most of my maps in DD. ‎  The part that zooms across the sky is simply Sky0x_2.txr, so if you dont want to have it either create a texture that is see through or just delete or rename the texture in your \map\model to something else and the layer that moves will be gone.

I am assuming, though I have not looked at john's newest model set for the skies, that creating a static yet transparent set of clouds would not be too difficult..it would only require that you simply add to the dome model and horizon sets that he has made.

Personally, I am not a fan of the cloud layer that SOM puts in place, its movement and placement just look generic to me. ‎  Ideally, the moving clouds would have been good if we could recreate the model they are attached to to move across the sky rather than from horizon to horizon. ‎  This might be doable (though I know we wont be able to adjust the speed.) ‎  John may have already answered this problem in his model set, but if we can configure the sky as a dome and move the part that is animated to just the top portion it would look far better.

Part of the problem I have seen with SOM games that makes the sky look bad is everyone has been putting their view distance so low. ‎  I am not certain why everyone does this..unless the computer they are working on just has a bad graphics card? ‎  It seems uneccessary to make the view distance anything below 20-25 meters. ‎  Low drawing distance not only makes the sky look goofy (unbearably in some situations where people choose a very white fog and white horizon) but it also takes away from the scale of the setting. ‎  I think giving the player the ability to look far away enhances the scale of the environment, letting you feel like youre in a large area.

John, until I get home some time this week and play with your new model, can you consider the below picture and let me know your opinion.

[HwitVlf]

Other than SoM's 'Blue Sky', I never thought of the textures as clouds so much as mist. So it made sense that they moved fast and close to the ground.

I think that idea could work well Todd; the only problem might be that it could leave straight edge looking transitions in the sky depending on how you handle the textures. Also, SoM renders the sky model screwy so you can't really put one 'layer' partly in front and partly behind a different layer. In other words, people could see all of the 'folded square' shape in your example picture even if its corners go behind the dome shape. But, its shape wouldn't have to actually be a square so you could just make it end at the dome.

In real life, clouds go all the way to the horizon, but they get smaller, move slower and have less contrast as they approach the horizon line; you can mimic the less-contrast effect using a fog layer, but SoM can't really make clouds get smaller and move slower near the horizon. In life, clouds don't move much to the naked eye anyways so personally, I would just use a non-moving texture with built in perspective for a cloudy sky. Or, you could make the fog layer so thick that the moving clouds almost disappear near the horizon.

[dmpdesign]

I agree that the static texture is the best idea.

The only time where this other scenario may prove useful is if someone was going to generate a mountain horizon or something that shouldnt have 'clouds' in front of it. ‎  As far as I remember, KF1 and 2 never had any moving clouds, and they looked fine. ‎  Static is the way to go IMO.